by Allen Brown and Curtis Wolfe
The property located at 227-229 St. Patrick Street is one of three heritage properties in the Lowertown West Heritage Conservation District bought in 2019 by developer, Brian Dagenais. Partnering with Teska Development, the intention is to demolish the properties and build 24 new rental units.
The current building is a fine example of vernacular 19th-century Québec domestic architecture, with four dormer windows in front, a carriageway used to access stables at the rear, two balconies, and a front porch. These features can be traced back to traditions in Normandy, France, and are rarely found outside Québec and parts of Eastern Ontario.
The current building is not the first to be built on this property. The earliest records show that the administration of Colonel By originally leased the land in 1829 to Henry Donee. By 1844, Pierre Maroux (or Miroux) owned a one-storey building on the eastern part of the current lot. The 1851 census shows that mostly French Canadians lived in the area, rather than Irish settlers, who also inhabited Lowertown.
In 1869, the eastern half of the lot was purchased by Jérémie Charron, the year he married Henriette Gravelle at the nearby Notre-Dame Basilica. Charron seems likely to have been responsible for constructing the current building, sometime between 1869 and 1877.
Charron was a constable of the Dominion Police, which was established by the federal government in 1868 after the assassination of Thomas D’Arcy McGee. The Dominion Police provided security and bodyguard services for Canadian political leaders. It also operated an early intelligence service that infiltrated the Fenian Brotherhood, which had attacked Ontario, Québec, and Manitoba between 1866 and 1871, and was suspected of being responsible for McGee’s assassination.
Charron and his family resided at 227 St. Patrick, but also rented 229 at times. Among his tenants from 1886 to 1889 was Louis Brunette, one of Ottawa’s ten carriagemakers in the late 1800s.
One of the Charron children, Alphonse-Télesphore, would go on to achieve considerable success. As a career civil servant, he earned a doctorate in chemical sciences and an appointment as the Experimental Farm’s first chemist.
He was also very involved in Franco-Ontarian affairs, having been president of the Institut canadien-français d’Ottawa, a co-founder of Ottawa’s French-language newspaper, Le Droit, and president of the Association canadienne-française d’enseignement d’Ontario.
In 1899, Charron relinquished ownership of the property to Hull lawyer, Francois-Xavier Talbot. Notably, Talbot represented the heirs of Hull founders Philemon and Abigail Wright in a 21-year-long case over costs of construction materials, which reached the Québec Court of Appeal.
Talbot also rented the property to various tenants, including Pierre-Régule Roy, a native of Rimouski, Québec. This jack-of-all-trades took on jobs from boatmaking to shoemaking. Records in 1892 list him as a moccasin-maker. Moccasins were sold in local department stores such as Bryson, Graham & Co. While there is no indication that he had an Indigenous background, his work as a moccasin-maker reflects an influence of Indigenous traditions on 19th-century Ottawa residents and cultural exchanges during that time.
Sadly, the fate of 227-229 St. Patrick, along with two adjacent 150-year-old properties, currently hangs in the balance. The current owner, Brian Dagenais, has done little to maintain the properties since he bought them for $2.65 million four years ago. Since that time, he has rented the apartments in the three buildings to tenants supported by city housing agencies, who unfortunately have caused further damage, leading to frequent complaints by neighbours about drug use, violent incidents, unsanitary conditions, and rodents.
Indeed, these three buildings are believed to be among several “problematic” properties which has inspired Rideau-Vanier Councillor, Stephanie Plante, to propose a motion to the City’s Emergency Preparedness Committee to coordinate the city’s response to frequent complaints. She proposes to create a webpage where residents can report addresses with a history of recurring incidents relating to safety, fire risk, building codes, or illegal activity. Plante says that 10 properties in her ward require daily visits from fire, police, paramedics, or public works, which create a financial burden on the city
Recently, the partial collapse of a floor in 227-229 St. Patrick has led to growing concerns in the community about another case of “demolition by neglect” of a heritage property. Heritage proponents argue that the attached back-buildings should be demolished and replaced with new development that preserves and restores the original heritage buildings. This is a more expensive option than demolition and is one for which the developers have shown little enthusiasm.
Heritage properties at risk, 227-237 St. Patrick (Photo:
Allen Brown)
